Awards

Staff Pick

What I am in awe of about this book (as well as his earlier works) is Miéville's amazing use of language — the stretching beyond the familiar into a world that thrives in the most beautifully descriptive passages I know. Recommended by Mark, Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

In Iron Council, China Miéville delivers us back to the teeming metropolis of New Crobuzon. Its citizens (a fantastic array of creatures) are on the brink of revolution, and its government will use any means necessary to control the uprising. Fans of Perdido Street Station and The Scar will appreciate the unique way Miéville ties in a few familiar characters this time around. Recommended by Mark, Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

In Iron Council, China Miéville delivers us back to the teeming metropolis of New Crobuzon. Its citizens (a fantastic array of creatures) are on the brink of revolution, and its government will use any means necessary to control the uprising. Fans of Perdido Street Station and The Scar will appreciate the unique way Miéville ties in a few familiar characters this time around. Recommended by David, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Following Perdido Street Station and The Scar, acclaimed author China Miéville returns with his hugely anticipated Del Rey hardcover debut. With a fresh and fantastical band of characters, he carries us back to the decadent squalor of New Crobuzon — this time, decades later.

It is a time of wars and revolutions, conflict and intrigue. New Crobuzon is being ripped apart from without and within. War with the shadowy city-state of Tesh and rioting on the streets at home are pushing the teeming city to the brink. A mysterious masked figure spurs strange rebellion, while treachery and violence incubate in unexpected places.

In desperation, a small group of renegades escapes from the city and crosses strange and alien continents in the search for a lost hope. In the blood and violence of New Crobuzon's most dangerous hour, there are whispers. It is the time of the iron council....

The bold originality that broke Miéville out as a new force of the genre is here once more in Iron Council: the voluminous, lyrical novel that is destined to seal his reputation as perhaps the edgiest mythmaker of the day.

Review:

"In this stunning new novel set mainly in the decadent and magical city of New Crobuzon, British author Miéville (The Scar) charts the course of a proletarian revolution like no other. The capitalists of New Crobuzon are pushing hard. More and more people are being arrested on petty charges and 'Remade' into monstrous slaves, some half animal, others half machine. Uniformed militia are patrolling the streets and watching the city from their dirigibles. They turn a blind eye when racists stage pogroms in neighborhoods inhabited by non-humans. An overseas war is going badly, and horrific, seemingly meaningless terrorist acts occur with increasing frequency. Radical groups are springing up across the city. The spark that will ignite the revolution, however, is the Perpetual Train. Workers building the first transcontinental railroad, badly mistreated by their overseers, have literally stolen a train, laying track into the wild back-country west of the great city, tearing up track behind them, fighting off the militia sent to arrest them, even daring to enter the catotopic zone, that transdimensional continental scar where anything is possible. Full of warped and memorable characters, this violent and intensely political novel smoothly combines elements of fantasy, science fiction, horror, even the western. Miéville represents much of what is new and good in contemporary dark fantasy, and his work is must reading for devotees of that genre. Agent, Mic Cheetham. 8-city author tour. (July 27)FYI: Miéville has won Arthur C. Clarke, British Science Fiction and British Fantasy awards." Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"Prodigiously inventive — Miéville dreams up and throws away more astonishing ideas in a paragraph than most writers manage in a lifetime..." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"A gripping political novel set in a fantastic other-world. But it is almost equally fantastic in its prose, combining blunt-hammered sentences and sentence fragments with an astonishingly arcane diction....[A] work of both passionate conviction and the highest artistry." The Washington Post

Review:

"Miéville moves effortlessly into the first division of those who use the tools and weapons of the fantastic to define and create the fiction of the coming century." Neil Gaiman

Review:

"[Miéville's] verbal and imaginative largesse may throw some readers while utterly engrossing others. No doubt about it, he's an original." Ray Olson, Booklist

Review:

"[Miéville] assaults the reader's senses with a cornucopia of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes, bringing his brilliantly imagined world to life. Strongly recommended for most sf or speculative fiction collections." Library Journal

Review:

"[A] dazzling writer....His latest is likely to only build his readership further from those who were drawn to this charismatic new writer with his previous novels set in the same world." John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Review:

"Continuously fascinating....Miéville creates a world of outrageous inventiveness." The Denver Post

About the Author

China Miéville was born in 1972. He is the author of King Rat, which was nominated for an International Horror Guild Award and the Bram Stoker Prize; Perdido Street Station, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Fantasy Award; and The Scar, which won the Locus Award and the British Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for the Hugo Award, Philip K. Dick Award, and Arthur C. Clarke Award. He lives and works in London.

What I am in awe of about this book (as well as his earlier works) is Miéville's amazing use of language — the stretching beyond the familiar into a world that thrives in the most beautifully descriptive passages I know.

by Mark

"Staff Pick"
by Mark,

In Iron Council, China Miéville delivers us back to the teeming metropolis of New Crobuzon. Its citizens (a fantastic array of creatures) are on the brink of revolution, and its government will use any means necessary to control the uprising. Fans of Perdido Street Station and The Scar will appreciate the unique way Miéville ties in a few familiar characters this time around.

by Mark

"Staff Pick"
by David,

In Iron Council, China Miéville delivers us back to the teeming metropolis of New Crobuzon. Its citizens (a fantastic array of creatures) are on the brink of revolution, and its government will use any means necessary to control the uprising. Fans of Perdido Street Station and The Scar will appreciate the unique way Miéville ties in a few familiar characters this time around.

by David

"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"In this stunning new novel set mainly in the decadent and magical city of New Crobuzon, British author Miéville (The Scar) charts the course of a proletarian revolution like no other. The capitalists of New Crobuzon are pushing hard. More and more people are being arrested on petty charges and 'Remade' into monstrous slaves, some half animal, others half machine. Uniformed militia are patrolling the streets and watching the city from their dirigibles. They turn a blind eye when racists stage pogroms in neighborhoods inhabited by non-humans. An overseas war is going badly, and horrific, seemingly meaningless terrorist acts occur with increasing frequency. Radical groups are springing up across the city. The spark that will ignite the revolution, however, is the Perpetual Train. Workers building the first transcontinental railroad, badly mistreated by their overseers, have literally stolen a train, laying track into the wild back-country west of the great city, tearing up track behind them, fighting off the militia sent to arrest them, even daring to enter the catotopic zone, that transdimensional continental scar where anything is possible. Full of warped and memorable characters, this violent and intensely political novel smoothly combines elements of fantasy, science fiction, horror, even the western. Miéville represents much of what is new and good in contemporary dark fantasy, and his work is must reading for devotees of that genre. Agent, Mic Cheetham. 8-city author tour. (July 27)FYI: Miéville has won Arthur C. Clarke, British Science Fiction and British Fantasy awards." Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews,
"Prodigiously inventive — Miéville dreams up and throws away more astonishing ideas in a paragraph than most writers manage in a lifetime..."

"Review"
by The Washington Post,
"A gripping political novel set in a fantastic other-world. But it is almost equally fantastic in its prose, combining blunt-hammered sentences and sentence fragments with an astonishingly arcane diction....[A] work of both passionate conviction and the highest artistry."

"Review"
by Neil Gaiman,
"Miéville moves effortlessly into the first division of those who use the tools and weapons of the fantastic to define and create the fiction of the coming century."

"Review"
by Ray Olson, Booklist,
"[Miéville's] verbal and imaginative largesse may throw some readers while utterly engrossing others. No doubt about it, he's an original."

"Review"
by Library Journal,
"[Miéville] assaults the reader's senses with a cornucopia of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes, bringing his brilliantly imagined world to life. Strongly recommended for most sf or speculative fiction collections."

"Review"
by John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
"[A] dazzling writer....His latest is likely to only build his readership further from those who were drawn to this charismatic new writer with his previous novels set in the same world."

"Review"
by The Denver Post,
"Continuously fascinating....Miéville creates a world of outrageous inventiveness."

Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and gifts — here at Powells.com.